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This course explores the normative demands and definitions of justice that transcend the nation-state and its borders, through the lenses of political justice, economic justice, and human rights. What are our duties (if any) towards those who live in other countries? Should we be held morally responsible for their suffering? What if we have contributed to it? Should we be asked to remedy it? At what cost? These are some of the questions driving the course. Although rooted in political theory and philosophy, the course will examine contemporary problems that have been addressed by other scholarly disciplines, public debates, and popular media, such as immigration and open borders, climate change refugees, and the morality of global capitalism (from exploitative labor to blood diamonds). As such, readings will combine canonical pieces of political theory and philosophy with readings from other scholarly disciplines, newspaper articles, and popular media.

PHIL 80:Mind, Matter, and Meaning

Intensive study of central topics in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind in preparation for advanced courses in philosophy. Emphasis on development of analytical writing skills. Prerequisite: one prior course in Philosophy or permission of instructor.

What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.

PHIL 100:Greek Philosophy (CLASSICS 40)

We shall cover the major developments in Greek philosophical thought, focusing on Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools (the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics). Topics include epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, ethics and political theory. No prereqs, not repeatable.

PHIL 101:Introduction to Medieval Philosophy (PHIL 201)

This course is an introduction to medieval moral philosophy, broadly construed. In addition to doctrines that we would nowadays readily think of as falling within the domain of ethics, we will be looking at closely related topics that might today be thought to belong more properly to metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, or the philosophy of human nature.

PHIL 103:19th-Century Philosophy

Focus is on ethics and the philosophy of history. Works include Mill's
Utilitarianism, Hegel's
The Philosophy of World History, Marx's
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Kierkegaard's
The Sickness Unto Death, and Nietzsche's
On the Genealogy of Morals.

Last offered: Spring 2011
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 104:Philosophy of Religion

Key issues in the philosophy of religion. Topics include the relationship between faith and reason, the concept of God, proofs of God's existence, the meaning of religious language, arguments for and against divine command theory in ethics and the role of religious belief in a liberal society.

Last offered: Winter 2012
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 106:Ancient Greek Skepticism (PHIL 206)

The ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics who think that for any claim there is no more reason to assert it than deny it and that a life without any beliefs is the best route to happiness. Some ancient opponents of the Pyrrhonian skeptics and some relations between ancient and modern skepticism.

Last offered: Winter 2017
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 107:Plato's Early Dialogues (PHIL 207)

We shall read some of the most important and difficult of Plato¿s `early¿ dialogues: the Charmides, parts of the Euthydemus, the Gorgias, the Hippias Minor, the Meno, and the Protagoras. Topics include: the nature of pleasure and its role in the good life, good luck and the good life, self-knowledge, the relation between knowledge and virtue, whether virtue can be taught, learning and recollection, rhetoric, the relations among the virtues, Socratic ignorance, and the Socratic method of the elenchus.